The Pedagogy of Empowerment will explore empowerment through race, gender, health and activism in the context of HIV/AIDS in United States Black communities. Through this two tiered course, students will cultivate strong background knowledge of HIV in Black communities, and explore issues of accountability, apathy, and activism as they pertain to HIV prevention. The course has three main objectives.

The epidemiology of HIV as it affects African Americans and its many complexities — African Americans and homophobia, gender, racialism and health, and the persistence of HIV as an African American crisis. Students will use what they learn about the context of the epidemic to critically analyze chosen HIV prevention interventions, and explore the intersection of academia and activism.

As a consequence of this analysis, everyone in this class must learn an oral HIV prevention module developed by Professor Haniff which must be taught to community groups outside of Ann Arbor. This activist component is the praxis of this class which requires students to not just read and study empowerment but to actually be engaged in an effort to empower. Students will also study innovative ideas that will generate insights in creating change and making a difference.

Because empowerment is particularly important to women and relevant to sustainable education, there will be an emphasis on examining other empowerment pedagogies which are not HIV related. Here students will examine the problem of empowerment in a paradigm of problem posing education. The idea is to demonstrate to students that empowerment takes many forms and how these problems are resolved must be premised on the principle that ordinary people take responsibility for their own problems. This principle cannot be compromised.The responsibility of the educated is to find appropriate interventions that communities can own and dominate. We will explore the empowerment work of ordinary people through the ideas of Paulo Friere Bunker Roy’s Barefoot College.

Syllabi are available to current LSA students. IMPORTANT: These syllabi are provided to give students a general idea about the courses, as offered by LSA departments and programs in prior academic terms. The syllabi do not necessarily reflect the assignments, sequence of course materials, and/or course expectations that the faculty and departments/programs have for these same courses in the current and/or future terms.